Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) — Democrats are rallying around the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, seeking to channel the movement’s energy into votes in the 2012 elections by sharpening contrasts with Republicans who criticize the protests.

“If you’re concerned about Wall Street and our financial system, the president is standing on the side of consumers and the middle class,” senior White House adviser David Plouffe said when asked about the demonstrations during an interview today on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “And a lot of these Republicans are basically saying, ‘You know what? Let’s go back to the same policies that led to the Great Recession in the first place.’”

The protests, which began in New York City’s financial district and have spread across the country, are likely to be raised in tonight’s Republican presidential debate, sponsored by Bloomberg News and The Washington Post at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Dartmouth students and faculty plan a rally in support for the protesters this afternoon, before the 8 p.m. forum.

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The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which raises money for the party’s House candidates, circulated a petition this week telling supporters the goal is “100,000 Strong Standing with Occupy Wall Street.” The appeal ties House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s recent characterization of the protesters as “growing mobs” to Republican economic policies.

“Mobs? That must be what Republicans refer to as the middle class, or maybe the millions of unemployed Americans across the country,” the letter reads.

Last week, President Barack Obama said the movement reflects a “broad-based frustration” among Americans about the persistence of reckless practices on Wall Street after the financial crisis.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, has echoed his comments, saying the demonstrators are angry over the lack of employment prospects and government actions that are “not relevant to their lives.”

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“Americans need jobs, not cuts,” Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, said in a statement. “And Americans know we can afford it if big banks and the super-rich pay their fair share.’’

While fiscally conservative Tea Party activists, many organized by top party leaders and donors like industrialists David and Charles Koch, volunteered for Republican candidates, it’s yet to be seen how the decentralized Occupy Wall Street will respond to the attention from Democrats.

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As Democrats woo the protesters, top Republicans have stepped up their criticism of the movement.

“Dividing our nation at a time of crisis is the wrong way to go. All the streets are connected,” Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said yesterday at a town hall event in Milford, New Hampshire. “Wall Street’s connected to Main Street, and so finding a scapegoat, finding someone to blame, in my opinion, isn’t the right way to go.”

Another presidential candidate, former Godfather’s Pizza chairman Herman Cain, said the demonstrators should blame themselves, not Wall Street or big banks, for their joblessness.

“This is a coordinated effort on the part of unions and Obama supporters to distract the American people from the real problem, which is the failed policies of the Obama administration,” Cain said on Fox News’s “Hannity” program yesterday as he, Romney and six other participants gathered in New Hampshire for tonight’s debate.

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Tea Party leaders are eager to contrast their supporters with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.

In a statement released today, Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, co-founders of the Tea Party Patriots, described their backers as wanting more fiscal responsibility in government and not subscribing to a belief the corporations are “inherently evil.”

The Wall Street protesters, they said, “want less of what made America great and more of what is damaging to America: a bigger, more powerful government to come in and take care of them so they don’t have to work like the rest of us who pay our bills.”

A top activist with the anti-tax Tea Party movement has had a personal brush with federal tax collectors. Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder and national co-ordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, owed, with her husband, over half a million dollars to the IRS when the pair filed for bankruptcy last year, according to filings examined by TPMmuckraker. The couple’s bankruptcy filing, made in August 2008 to the US Bankruptcy Court for Georgia’s Northern District, stated that Martin and her husband Lee Martin, of Woodstock, Georgia, owed the IRS $510,000, after making a payment of $16,640 that June. The couple also owed just over $71,000 to Ford Motor Credit, the automaker’s financing arm.

Gee, I don’t really remember seeing any of the Wall Street Occupiers waving guns around. Nor have I seen them screaming at the opposition, except the bankers and wankers that deserve it.
I’m bummed NYC is so far from me. I’d LOVE to go set up shop, and teach them hyper-tech post-Yuppies how to rough it in comfort! Besides, how cool would it be to have different protest points hooked up with World War 2 field phones! :D

when i read her name, a little bell went off. i thought i remembered something shady about her finances. she’s like the teabaggers who bitched about government interference in health care while they rolled around on government-paid-for scooters.

that’s how it’s going to be unless campaigns are publicly funded. if obama hadn’t taken the money from wall street, he would not have been able to compete with capt underpants. i don’t wish it was so, but it is. i’m not excusing obama, and i hate that he’s kept geithner and some of the others around, but i can see how we got where we are.

remember when latte had those dvd covers enlarged and used them at the anti-bbb rally? i was really surprised how good the resolution was on the enlargements. if you want, i’ll send you a version without my copyright on it. just let me know. in fact, if there’s a street in detroit you’ll be marching on, and you can get me a good pic of the street marker, i can substitute that for wall street. or maybe i can use a generic street marker and fudge it.

I’m pissed off. The same Holder DoJ that let the banksters and wankers go unpunished and unregulated, the guys who can not prosecute war crimes or torture, have found the true way! They are going to bust their asses to get the legal weed sellers in California! This is not what I voted for. Nor the half dozen hot wars, troops garrisoned in somewhere between 120 to 180 countries. We have lost our minds. Move over third world, make room for one more.